(Mayor Bernard) Carvalho placed Chief Darryl Perry on leave Wednesday, a day after placing Assistant Chiefs Roy Asher and Ale Quibilan on leave. All three were required to turn in their equipment. Carvalho said they would remain on leave until an investigation of allegations is completed but would not say when that would be or whether they will be paid their wages during that period.

Carvalho refused to answer questions by reporters on Thursday, directing them to his communications team. When asked whether that team would answer questions that day, he responded flippantly, “Welcome to Kauai.” The county attorney has advised all county employees to remain silent, and Kauai police officers are telling reporters that they are under orders not to talk.

A reader commented that while the editorial’s criticism of official secrecy is certainly justified, the Star-Advertiser’s lack of independent reporting on this story is equally significant.

He commented: “In other words, their reporting isn’t producing much, so they blame the county’s PR people…weak.”

Hawaii News Now reported the nature of the complaint two days previously:

A source with knowledge of the case said the controversy involves accusations by KPD officer Darla Abbatiello-Higa. She received a $980,000 settlement from the county in a whistleblower protection lawsuit several years ago. The source said she registered a new hostile work environment complaint against Asher in October, then filed a second complaint against Quibilan last month….

According to the source, Perry initially wanted to work from home during the investigation involving the assistant chiefs because Abatiello-Higa also works at the headquarters, and she had accused him of favoring an assistant chief in one of her complaints. However, the source said the mayor told Perry he should remain at work. The source said Perry was then suspended for seven days for disobeying orders by not reporting to the office. After the week-long suspension, he’ll be on paid leave. Carvalho insisted that he has the authority to place the police chief on leave.

KHON cited similar reports from Kauai sources.

A search for Abatiello-Higa’s name on the Star-Advertiser web site produced no results.

The newspapers complaints about the county information policies are justified, but are no substitute for good reporting. On that I agree with the reader.

I’ve always considered Chief Perry one of the “good guys,” and his wife, Solette Perry, a human relations specialist and former UPW business agent, who was one of the few people close to the United Public Workers who stood up in defense of members harassed by the union during the dictatorial reign of former state director, Gary Rodrigues.

Rodrigues is completing his sentence at the federal correctional facility in Taft, California, after conviction on multiple charges stemming from a kickback scheme involving union contracts. He is scheduled for release on or before August 27, 2012.

I don’t think it matters if it was sent from a private email account- if it touches on the council’s business it is a public record.

Here’s why I don’t agree.

Hawaii’s law governing access to government records is found in Chapter 92F Hawaii Revised Statutes.

Here the statute’s deceptively simple definition of a “government record”:

“Government record” means information maintained by an agency in written, auditory, visual, electronic, or other physical form.

In a booklet providing guidance on the UIPA, the Office of Information Practices further explained:

OIP has interpreted “maintained” to mean information physically possessed or administratively controlled by an agency. An agency has administrative control over a record where it has the right to gain access to the record. For example, where an agency contracts with a private company and has the right to review the records held by the company under the contract, those records would be considered government records.

So back to the case of an email sent by a Hawaii official from a private email account. Is it a “public record?”

It doesn’t appear to fall under that definition of information “maintained by an agency” and therefore subject to public disclosure.

I’m guessing that may not be the end of the story. I hope readers will pile on with additional references.

Here’s what online readers are seeing this morning, at least as of this writing–about 8 a.m.

Or maybe this was just another victim of auto correcting software. Adventurers might check out Damn you, Auto Correct!

The question of whether the election of an anti-rail mayor could derail Honolulu’s transit project is definitely worth asking. Civil Beat tackled the question with a story by Mike Levine on January 12, before Ben Cayetano announced his firm intention to make a run for mayor.

For those with access to the Star-Advertiser, Keven Dayton tackled the same question in today’s newspaper.

I think the answer reached by both reporters is that while the mayor doesn’t have a way to simply pull the plug on the rail project, an anti-rail mayor could most likely create enough uncertainty to scare off federal support, causing the whole transit project to fall under its own weight. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it could be effective.

I also recommend Mike Levine’s story today on Civil Beat, “Can Honolulu Council Members Talk in Private About Proposed Laws?” There needs to be a lot more discussion about such matters. My own view is that trying to squeeze all the politics out of, well, politics, will not result in better public policy decisions.

Avoiding secret decision making, and opening the political process to public participation, is the clear goal of sunshine laws. But how far we should push in the direction of an absolutist, “in public and on stage or its illegal” approach to the search for policy consensus seems to an open and legitimate question.

Take the situation in Washington. I think there’s general agreement that the absolute, ideologically-driven partisan divide in Congress is not conducive to the best policies, or any policies at all.

Part of that can be attributed the absence of that degree of collegiality that previously allowed personal friendships and working relationships to develop across arbitrary party boundaries. Unlike today’s polarized politics, where everything is battled out in the glare of the expectations of respective party extremes, there used to be a level at which more normal, human relationships could be developed, and that provided a basis for compromises across ideological lines.

I highly recommend two books by historian Michael BeschlossTaking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963 1964, and Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965.

LBJ was a master of Congressional politics, and it is eye-opening to see how he worked to gather votes to support landmark legislation, using emotional, personal, political, and policy arguments to persuade.

Pretend that we–you and I, blogger and readers–have to reach a consensus on how to approach this issue. We begin knowing that there’s a substantial distance between some of our views, as evidenced by Kauai blogger Andy Parx, who confessed being “irked” by my some of my positions on this issue. Do we build a consensus by firing online broadsides back and forth? Do we hold a series of panel discussions broadcast via community media? Not a bad idea, but what happens when we still don’t have enough agreement to move ahead? If we’re still limited to these fully open debates, I might still not have any real idea of the motives, experiences, and perceptions of those arguing different points of view. I would be looking for points of agreement, commonalities that I could use to draw opponents into more productive discussions. Often, though, that kind of personal information isn’t shared in public settings, but in private conversations. Automatically bad? I don’t think so, especially if it can create movement in what would otherwise be a policy standoff, but your mileage may vary.